


The Time I Came Out to My Mom - Personal Narrative

by staygaytabulous



Category: it's about me
Genre: Coming Out, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-12
Updated: 2015-10-12
Packaged: 2018-04-26 03:34:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4988635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staygaytabulous/pseuds/staygaytabulous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the title says all - awe my cat just sneezed behind me so fucking cute - this includes me having a panic attack, but ends happily</p><p>we had to write a personal narrative using the great and all-mighty five senses, and i write p good sad stories using descriptive scenes, so i wrote just that for my language arts class (i just hope she doesn't pick some of us to read ours for the class)</p><p>i didn't have anywhere else to post this, so here it goes!</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Time I Came Out to My Mom - Personal Narrative

**Author's Note:**

> in case i didn't give you enough warnings: I HAVE A SLIGHT PANIC ATTACK AND IT'S DESCRIPTIVE KIND OF MAYBE I GUESS

The minute the heat spread throughout my head, I knew it was too late. The sweat started forming, the backs of my knees, my thighs, my elbows, my neck and forehead, all hot and sticky. My legs were shaking slightly as I kicked my foot out of the bottom of my comforter to keep it cool, but the rest of me was still burning up. My stomach flipped upside down, contorting into random shapes inside of me, and I didn’t have to puke, but I wish I could, just so this feeling of overwhelming guilt would just go away already. I threw my comforter to my side and let the cool air blowing gently from my vent above my bed course over my body.

Soon my body felt cool as ice, but I was still shaking (though now mostly from the cold). I ripped the comforter over me and curled up on my side. I felt the tears prickling my eyes, warm and blurring my eyesight. It was dark in my room, but I could see some of the outlines of the paper photos lining my wall from the green piercing light my alarm clock gives off. My hair was sticking to my forehead and neck, curls sometimes falling into my face from me moving around constantly.

I wasn’t going to actually do this, was I? No, no, of course not. I’ve kept this a secret for two and a half years, I’m sure I can make it until I’m able to move out…

(Of course, the moment that stupid guilt started gnawing on me, I knew I was a goner. The last time this happened, I told her, I told her everything and then threw up a few painful seconds later. I was, like, ten back then, but I’m fourteen now. I didn’t want to tell her, yet I did.)

I can do this, I can just close my eyes and roll over and sleep this off.

Right?

Rolling over, I check the time. The green makes me blink back more tears. I sigh and sit up, I can feel the pressure of go, go tell her how you feel, tell her everything that she doesn’t know. I know I can’t fight this any longer, I know I can’t, but I still always have tried to.

I’m done fighting this, though. I’m done hiding it from her. The world knows already, I didn’t exactly try to hide who I was from my friends, or from random classmates who I’ll see for the next three years and then probably won’t have contact with for many, many years after that. Well, I might see some at the graduation reunion in, probably, two-thousand-twenty-eight, or maybe thirty-three, but that’s not the point. They aren’t family. They aren’t her. They aren’t my mom. I’m done hiding it from her. She needs to know! I fling myself out of my bed and with shaking fingers, I pull on some pajama pants. I open my door, first turning the handle all the way, then pushing the handle down with my weight as to not make it creak, then sliding it open a crack and slinking through like a fox. I gently walk out, the TV downstairs is noisy, the light from the kitchen, blinding. I take a breath at the top of the stairway, then slowly make my way down, trying not to make a sound. Once at the bottom, I place my feet on the wood and look out from behind the wall. Faintly, I can hear my dad’s own television down in the basement. The whiff of earlier’s dinner makes my stomach churn. I check the clock again and take another deep breath, closing my eyes and willing myself not to cry, do not cry!

Opening my eyes, I take a step, my feet sticky on the ground with sweat of anticipation, and let my breath bellow out into the colder living-dining-kitchen trinity of a room. I take another step, then another. She’s looking at me now, asking me why I’m up. The blood rushing in my ears is torture, so I make my last few steps long and swift. I quietly round the couch and stand before her, trembling far more than I was earlier. This was such a bad idea, my God, why’d I do this? I can’t go back now, can’t just blow it off saying I forgot if I said goodnight to her or not or that I was thirsty and needed a drink; she knows something’s wrong.

She questions me again, and this time I do answer. Words tumble from my mouth just barely, for I can hardly say a single syllable without choking on the mixture of air and my tongue. I can taste the tears that are cascading down my cheeks. Salty, and tasting a little of the year's of repression. I hate the wetness of that one patch of skin, I don’t like how the rest of my being isn’t wet, just that one spot where a tear fell from my eyes. I also hate how it shows my weak side. I’m the rock out of most all of my friendships, I do not cry, never, not once. At least, not towards them, not where they can see. However, this is my home, my place in the world at the moment that’s safest. This is where I can cry, and so I do. Soon I’m not even saying anything, I’m just sobbing great heaves of feelings. I hope she doesn’t think I’m a disaster of an eldest child. How does Rachel look up to me, I’m a mess! She’s sitting up more now, she was laying before. She’s telling me to calm down, to tell her what’s wrong. So I try, I take breaths too big for my lungs. My head is starting to pound with an oncoming headache; that always happens when I cry. Finally I get my breathing - not under control, but in another few minutes it will be there. She repeats her questions again when she thinks I’m starting to be ‘okay’. I’m shaking, full body tremors as I tell her my deepest secret, the darkest thing I’ve kept to myself from my family. She knows everything, everything but this. I spit it out like it’s poisonous. She blinks at me, overwhelmed from my panic at such a small thing. She tells me to calm down, that it’s okay. So what that I’m this? So what if I feel this way? It’s okay, she says, it’s not the end of the world. She mothers me about how I need to stop keeping things to myself so long, it’s not healthy, and then I get like this and panic about everything until I finally tell whatever it was that I was holding in. There’s nothing wrong with who I am, she says.

I hunch down, relaxation coming from her words. I’m okay.


End file.
